


Odds

by Scribe



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe





	Odds

Dom flies over almost immediately because that's what a best friend does but Billy's still hurting, too raw around the edges for a hug to relax him. He watches Dom wander around his new flat, his new three-room flat that makes no pretense about being what it is, a transitory place for a man alone.

"Where did this come from?" Dom asks. His fingertips skate the leaves of a little bamboo plant, two stalks standing upright in a bed of small stones.

"Elijah sent it." Elijah is good at silent support. Billy likes that, the knowledge that his friend is there with no added pressure, no expectations. There are times when he is certain that he and Dom share one heart but that doesn't change who he is. From a young age he has preferred to be alone with loss.

"He should know better," Dom says. "Bamboo in even numbers is considered unlucky, did you know that? Odds are lucky, evens are unlucky. I'll have to tell him."

Later that night Dom kisses him, soft and insistent and too sure, and Billy shoves him crashing into the wall and chokes on his rage. He screams at Dom for assuming things and for wanting things and for being there, really, being there at a time when Billy does not want to be reminded of anything at all and when he's finished he calls Dom a cab and waits in his bedroom until it comes.

They don't speak for a month.

Things get easier, a little. Billy wears the edges of his memories smoother and cracks the door to the world a little wider each day.

On the day he opens it he finds Dom sitting in the hallway outside his shitty flat, quiet, three stalks of bamboo in his hands.


End file.
